E = m × γ

γ = 1 / √(1 − v²/c²)

What kills is total energy, not size. A small body moving fast carries more energy than a big one drifting, so it eats the big one. That is the whole game in one sentence.

Your hands

• Hold and drag to turn. It does not make you fast. Lifting your finger does not burn.
• Tap to throw mass out the back. You shrink, you go faster the way you were going, and the light you fired is food for whoever touches it.
• A heavier ship comes for you. A lighter one runs, slower than a drift. Tap to finish a runner, or to get away.

Reading the field

• White dashes. That one can eat you now. Run.
• Amber ring. You can eat that one, even if it speeds up.
• Amber, blue dashes. You win now. If it goes fast, it eats you.
• The map at the bottom matches the screen. You are the center. Drag toward a dot to reach it. White can eat you. Plain amber you can eat. Amber with blue dashes loses until it goes fast. The ring is the Crucible. A hollow dot is farther than the map shows. A sweep goes around the map, and a contact flashes when the sweep finds it.
• A glowing cone off your nose means you are near the speed limit. That is when you are most dangerous and most likely to die.

The Crucible

The dark thing at the centre. It still pulls on you. Linger and it boils you. The core kills you. Other ships steer clear, so they will not fall in for you to eat.

Where it came from

Nobody built it, and nobody found it burning. It is simply the place where mass stops being mass.

Dust falls in. Ships will not follow you in. The dust you eat was somebody once. The light you burn to move is you, leaving. Every body that has ever crossed this field ends as radiation falling through that dark, and the field is not an arena drawn around the Crucible. It is the queue.

Which is the joke in the name. A crucible is where you melt things down, and it is also the trial that shows what somebody is made of. It is doing both to you right now, and going nearer than is sensible is how it takes you.

Your score

The highest energy you reached before you died. Nothing else counts, so a careful small run scores nothing and a reckless enormous one scores everything.

← Arcadia